Journal of AdvancedMedical and Dental Sciences Research

Background: Restorative dental treatments are used to repair damage to teeth caused by tooth decay or accidents. Creating a physical barrier around a treatment site to reduce contamination of the site with saliva is a common practice. Aim of the study: To study asses of employing rubber dam for teeth restorative procedures by local dental practitioners. Materials and methods: The study was conducted in the Department of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics of the Dental institute. For the study, 120 private dental clinics in the state were selected. A pre-framed questionnaire with closed questions (questions with answers to choose from) was selected and mailed to all the selected practitioners. Information related to year of graduation, practice type and gender of the respondents, information related to use of rubber dam in operative and endodontic procedures, information related to the dentist's attitude to the use of rubber dam and information related to dentist's reasons for using or not using rubber dam were sought in the questionnaire. Results: The age group of the participants belonged to 25 to 70 years of which most of the participants belonged to age group 30-49 years. There were 34 dentists with age <30 years, 56 with age between 30-60 years and 30 dentists with age > 60 years. 78 participating dentists were males and 42 dentists were females. The results showed that 4 of male dentists and 2 female dentists always used rubber dam; whereas 12 male dentists and 4 female dentists never used rubber dam. Conclusion: Within the limitations of the present study, it can be concluded that majority of private practising dentists never use rubber dam in actual practice. So, there is a high need for improving the awareness among private dentist practitioners to use rubber dam to improve quality of treatment provided. Keywords: Rubber dam, restorative procedure, tooth restoration